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Datalog (Final Fantasy XIII)/Analects
The Analects are ancient records surrounding the myth of Gran Pulse and Cocoon in Final Fantasy XIII. The following is a list of Datalog entries for the Analects. Analects I. The Vanished Gods Obtain: Clear Mission 03 – Massif Contamination Luminous lamented, :for creation spiraled unto doom. Stout fashioned earth, :that future might take root. Sage turned mind's eye inward, :seeking truth profound. Fool desired naught, :and soon was made one with it. Maker forged fal'Cie, :from fragments Maker's own. Maker forged Man, :from traces once Divine. In time the gods departed, :leaving all by their hands wrought. Fal'Cie were as Man forsaken, :orphans of Maker absconded. –Author unknown II. Lindzei's Nest Obtain: Clear Mission 10: Hollow Hope :And lo, the viper Lindzei bore fangs into the pristine soil of our Gran Pulse; despoiled the land and from it crafted a cocoon both ghastly and unclean. :Lies spilled forth from the serpent's tongue: 'Within this shell lies paradise.' Men heard these lies and were seduced and led away. :O cursed are the fools who trust a snake and turn their backs upon the bounty of Pulse's hallowed land! For those who dwell in that cocoon are not Men, but slaves of the demon Lindzei. :Ye who honor Pulse: rise unto the heavens, and cast down the viper's nest! ::''-- Author unknown'' III. The Chosen Obtain: Clear Mission 33: A Parent's Pledge :Two l'Cie are they, the Chosen, and from the North they hail. Endowed are they with fal'Cie Focus, to bear the burden of the Beast. :My brothers and sisters of Gran Pulse: Honor the Chosen in your prayers! Let the blade forged of their will be tempered by your faith, that it might sunder that devilish cocoon's facade! ::''-- A Call to Arms'' IV. The Heavenly Deceit Obtain: Clear Mission 28: Faded Glory :Ragnarok took wing; made to smite Cocoon, and thereby deliver us our everlasting peace. But Her Providence would not let it be. :The Goddess pitied the fools who so blindly bowed to Lindzei's will, and so She robbed Ragnarok of power, putting the l'Cie to an early crystal sleep, Focus yet incomplete. ::''-- Sermons of the seeress Paddra Nsu-Yeul'' V. The Age of Fading Glory Obtain: Clear Mission 06: No Place Like Home :How long now, since the demons of Cocoon violated this land? Where once the peoples of Gran Pulse stood as one, united against a common foe, today we stand divided, at war amongst ourselves. :We walk on the edge of a knife, teetering, ever but one step from our demise. How tired a species, that we must rob our own of the necessities for life lest we succumb to the fate to which we so willingly subject others! :Even Haeri, at the height of its glory, laid to ruin by a menace greater still! Surely the vipers within that floating nest look down upon us with self-righteous scorn, to see this decline of our once-great civilization. ::''-- Criticisms of a Pulsian People'' VI. The Age of Ruin Obtain: Clear Mission 57: What's Yours Is Brine :The fal'Cie of Hallowed Pulse offer us no salvation. Populations dwindle, and still they but make more of us l'Cie, dealing out one incomprehensible Focus after the next as they drive us toward our end. :Men take up arms against their brothers now. We, who should be joining hands to survive in the face of nature's trials, turn on one another to secure what few of her blessings remain. :I suspect that even the city of Paddra, this last bastion of civilization, will not long stand against the evils we now perpetrate. Human life on Gran Pulse has passed the point of no return. ::''-- Criticisms of a Pulsian People'' VII. Hallowed Pulse Obtain: Clear Mission 18: So Close, Yet So Far :It was the Great and Hallowed Pulse who, seeking to expand divine domain, parted the chaos and fashioned realm within; made fal'Cie, and charged them with this world's completion. :The fal'Cie, anxious to please the hand that shaped them, labored devotedly at the task they had been given. They made l'Cie of men so that they, too, might be able to aid the greater cause. Men, in turn, offered praise and prayer to Hallowed Pulse, naming their great land in honor of its architect. :Yet still the architect departed. ::''-- On the Nature of Fal'Cie'' VIII. Fell Lindzei Obtain: Clear Mission 55: Can't We All Just Get Along? :As our fal'Cie are the children of Hallowed Pulse, so are the fal'Cie who lurk within Cocoon the brood of Lindzei. :But all gods are not alike. :Lindzei is cunning and false; sovereign to snakes and fiends; an anathema to be abhorred. :Cocoon fal'Cie are of Fell Lindzei's line, yet that did not spare them. They were betrayed all the same; left orphans when their Succubus fled this earthly realm. ::''-- A Call to Arms'' IX. Her Providence Obtain: Clear Mission 58: The Culler of Many :Her Providence sought nothing. :Her Providence made nothing. :She but looked on, silent in Her sorrow. :The Goddess pitied mortals, destined as they were to die, and so She deigned to intervene in the hour of their greatest peril. She averted cataclysm that was to be, and put to rest the ones who would have robbed so many of what time fate had ordained. :Her compassion did not end at this. :The Goddess pitied also those subjected to that fate of Focus, crueler still than death. To them She sent Her messengers, to deliver hope when all was lost. ::''-- Sermons of the seeress Paddra Nsu-Yeul'' X. The Menace Beyond Obtain: Clear Mission 56: A Toothy Grin :They say the fal'Cie made the Arks in preparation for battle against the menace that lurks beyond. Where is this "beyond" of which they speak? Do they mean Cocoon, and the demons that dwell within? If so, they are mistaken. The legends of the Arks date far before that sphere was even crafted; whispers even hint at Arks displaced around the time of Cocoon's creation, spirited away to be hidden in its shell. :What, then, is the "menace"? What distant threat confronts us, and to what purpose? The gods vanished from this place. Are they now residents of the "beyond"? ::-- ''On the Nature of Fal'Cie XI. Hypothesis of the Hunt Obtain: Clear Mission 63: Crushed by Doubt :We've long held the goal of the fal'Cie's endless excavations to be the expansion of the world's inhabitable space-the creation of new lands with which to honor the gods. But I contend this to be false. Their methods lack the order one would expect if that were their purpose, and what's more, the gods they would honor have long since departed this world. :I propose a different explanation: the fal'Cie are hunting. Whether they seek a way to recall the gods or to journey to their side I cannot say, but I do believe the fal'Cie seek their lost deities. They search the earth, the skies, the waters, and even the deep places, seeking a gateway to the Divine. ::-- On the Nature of fal'Cie XII. The Door of Souls Obtain: Defeat Barthandelus in Oerba :When our earthly vessels meet their end, the souls they housed must leave this world. Would the path of their migration not be the same one as our departed gods? Must they not pass through the same doorway the Divine employed to reach that place that lies beyond? :If this is the case, it stands to reason that, should a great many lives at once be cut short, a flood of souls would surge through the aforementioned portal. The Door would be thrown wide, and perhaps we might even glimpse the gleaming light of Divinity beyond. ::-- On the Nature of fal'Cie XIII. Fabula Nova Crystallis Obtain: Clear Mission 64: The Doomherald :Children of Hallowed Pulse scour earth, searching substance for the Door. Those of Fell Lindzei harvest souls, combing ether for the same. So have I seen. :The Door, once shut, was locked away, with despair its secret key; sacrifice, the one hope of seeing it unsealed. :When the twilight of the gods at last descends upon this world, what emerges from the unseeable expanse beyond that Door will be but music, and that devoid of words: the lamentations of the Goddess Etro, as She sobs Her song of grief. ::-- Author unknown Analysis Final Fantasy XIII Ultimania Omega gives further analysis on the Analectshttp://thelifestream.net/forums/showthread.php?t=9425, and identifies the figures mentioned in Analect I: "Stout" is Pulse, who created the land of Gran Pulse, "Sage" is Lindzei, who had the fal'Cie create Cocoon, and "Fool" is the goddess Etro, who left the world for the Unseen Realm. "Luminous" is not explained in the Ultimania, although it may refer to Bhunivelze. The term Maker in this Analect doesn't appear to refer to a single being, but to the gods as a whole. In Analect II the Lindzei-lineage fal'Cie creating Cocoon and moving a portion of Gran Pulse's people there is described from the perspective of those angered by the seizure of their fellow men and of their resources. 'Demon' is the title given to Lindzei by the people of Gran Pulse, and the 'Demon's brood' refers to the fal'Cie of Lindzei-lineage. The term 'Demon's brood' was not used in the English localization, but appears in the first line of the Japanese text. Analect III tells of Vanille and Fang in the village of Oerba in the far north of Gran Pulse, being chosen to become l'Cie and being given the Focus of destroying Cocoon, and Analect IV is the account of the events of the War of Transgression, where Etro interfered by placing Fang and Vanille in crystal stasis. It is similar to the account on the Oerba epitaph, but Analect IV is the retelling of a vision received after the War of Transgression by a seeress from the now long-dead city of Paddra. Analects V and VI are also written by residents of Paddra, and describe the path of destruction that faced the people of Gran Pulse following the War of Transgression. The city "Haerii Archaeopolis" was attacked by the great beasts of Gran Pulse and the reckless creation of l'Cie by the fal'Cie was also a factor in the decline of the population. Analect VII is about Hallowed Pulse, the god worshiped by the people of Gran Pulse. It states that the fal'Cie of Pulse-lineage are charged with the Focus of completing the world, but this is mankind's interpretation, and in truth they are searching for the "gateway to the Divine" as per the hypothesis in Analect XI. Analect VIII talks of Lindzei, the god despised by the people of Gran Pulse. Expressions like "anathema" and "sovereign to snakes and fiends" are the bitter words of those who have had what is theirs pillaged, and not an objective view of Lindzei. Analect IX talks of the goddess Etro, also known as the 'goddess of death'. Etro's actions are driven by compassion for others, such as her stopping Fang as Ragnarok during the War of Transgression and preventing the death of many lives in Cocoon, and sending Eidolons from the Unseen World to l'Cie on the brink of despair in order to give them hope. Analect X seeks an answer to the mystery of the Arks, said to have been created by the fal'Cie in preparation of an invasion from beyond the world by an outside menace. It offers an interpretation that the 'beyond' is the domain of the gods, and that the purpose of the construction of the Arks was to invade that place. The sentence being referenced in the last line is missing the English localization; originally preceding the final line ("The gods vanished..."): "Or was it their design that we should mount an assault into that 'beyond'?" Analect XI rejects the common view given in Analect VII that the goal of the Pulse-lineage fal'Cie is the expansion of the physical world, and suggests that their true motive is to find the "gateway to the Divine" indicating that all fal'Cie seek to locate the 'gateway' to call back the Maker. Analect XII goes on to speculate about the nature of the gateway to the world of the dead, referenced in Analect XI as the 'gateway to the Divine'. The hypothesis that the simultaneous end of a great many lives would open wide the gateway, allowing a union with the Maker, is the basis for Barthandelus's plan. In the final Analect, Analect XIII, the first two lines are summaries of the actions and motives of the Pulse-lineage and Lindzei-lineage fal'Cie respectively, and the latter half is a premonition of the game's ending from a seeress who has received an oracle. This is the only place in Final Fantasy XIII where the terms "unseeable expanse" and "Etro" are used. "With despair its secret key" is a premonition of Fang becoming Ragnarok in her despair, and her actions bringing forth the appearance of the door to the Unseen World. "Sacrifice, the one hope" is a premonition of Vanille and Fang sacrificing themselves to save the people of Cocoon. "When the twilight of the gods at last descends" is the equivalent translation of Ragnarok in Norse mythology and a metaphor for Vanille and Fang's transformation and predicts Ragnarok receiving the support of Etro in the Unseen World to bring forth a miracle and save the people of Cocoon. Etymology The word analect means a "fragment" or "extract from literature". References de:Schriftfragment Category:Datalog in Final Fantasy XIII